Journalist and Author Sam Quinones’ book Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opioid Epidemic is this year’s A Summer Read selected title. York County Libraries and other mid-state libraries are teaming up with WITF’s Transforming Health, Aligning Forces for Quality – South Central PA, Wellspan Health, and Penn State Health to engage readers across Central PA in a conversation about the opioid epidemic and how we are confronting this crisis in our own local communities.
About Dreamland
Acclaimed journalist Sam Quinones weaves together two riveting tales of capitalism run amok whose unintentional collision has been a catastrophic opiate epidemic. The unfettered prescribing of pain medications during the 1990s reached its peak in Purdue Pharma’s campaign to market OxyContin, its new, expensive–extremely addictive–miracle painkiller. Meanwhile, a massive influx of black tar heroin–cheap, potent, and originating from one small county, Xalisco, Nayarit, on Mexico’s west coast and independent of any drug cartel, assaulted small town and mid-sized cities across the country, driven by a brilliant, almost unbeatable marketing and distribution system. Together these phenomena continue to lay waste to communities from Tennessee to Oregon, Indiana to New Mexico.
Borrow the Book
Books are on the shelves now. A Summer Read runs now through September and organizers (including our libraries) hope you will participate by borrowing Dreamland , read it, and hold discussions with your book clubs, friends, family and colleagues. Keep watch for more programs on this topic all summer.